Good morning!
Why is it a good morning you might ask? Well, the night that brought horizontal rains (at times the rain even rained up back to where it came from) and wind gusts up to ninety kilometers per hour has come and gone. The windows in my house rattled something fierce and a loose roof panel banged loudly the whole night through but stayed intact by some miracle. This morning trees block the roads, roads are rivers and roof panels need reinforcing. Cape of Storms. Why are we surprised?
I felt a renewed energy to share a recap of the goings-on in studio over the past few weeks.
I took over a brand new space and opened the very first Stefni store in Cape Town on the first of September. I didn’t have much time to make it into a breathtaking experience as ice cream fridges and other juice bar paraphernalia were only removed the day before my doors were meant to open. Shelves were put up with minimal space and walls were painted in back breaking positions. You try put up shelves and paint walls with a fridge taking up three quarters of the space you’re in. Bit of a shuffle and shimmy.
In between getting a shop up and running, bespoke pieces and orders still needed to leave the studio on time. I played shop during the day and manufactured as best I could during the nights. Carefully planning when to move what and how to keep my clients in the loop. The key to a successful business is clear and calm communication. I don’t care what anybody else says. A happy client is a well informed client. People just want to know what is going on. Do I always get it right, no. Come to think of it, life works well when we communicate clearly and calmly about what is happening for us too. That’s a pretty basic and powerful building block for anything. Clear communication. Excuse my frankness but we fuck up a lot of things because we don’t communicate. How silly and sad. Along with comms come the art of listening. In order for communication to be effective we need people to listen to what we are saying. This seems to be a lost art form.
I big part of my job is listening to what people have to say. I mean I’m responsible for rings on fingers that mean an awful lot to people who promise each other the world. Again, do I always get it right? No. To find the perfect moment where listeners and communicators dance in unison is one of the hardest things in life. Now throw a jeweller and a client who have never met each other together and see what happens. Art forms (communication and listening) need to align in a perfect storm scenario. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
This month I had an equal amount of clients that spoke my language but also those that didn’t understand me at all and vice versa. I struggled to hear what a few had to say and yet perfectly understood the rest. Like love languages. Figuring out what your clients ‘love language’ is is such a big part of the job. When I realize someones love language simply isn’t my strong point, I tend to refer them to another jeweller. Unlike a romantic relationship where you have a few months or years to become good at your partners love language. I don’t often sit in turmoil about referring clients. By now I know my strengths and my weaknesses and have wonderful people in the industry to walk alongside with. Referrals are easy and a strength. Making space for aligning myself with what is more suited to me and my style of creating.
Ok, so without further entwinement of life and love and work (which I personally don’t think is separate from each other whatsoever) here are the pieces that went out this month.
All in all, a month of successful studio space renovations and bespoke once-off pieces with beautiful stories behind them. I look at these pieces and think to myself “Woah, I made that”. What a feeling to be so skilled and so human at the same time.
Next week I’ll go into detail about one of these pieces and what it takes to make it, from start to finish.
Stefni
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